Ukraine

Articles about the Ukraine

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Left: Members of the Azov Battalion offer a sig heil salute. Right: US military advisors meet with Azov commanders in the field in November, 2017.

Known as a bastion of neo-Nazism, the Azov Battalion has received teams of American military advisors and high powered US-made weapons

Last November, an American military inspection team visited the Azov Battalion on the front lines of the Ukrainian civil war to discuss logistics and deepening cooperation. Images of the encounter showed American army officers poring over maps with their Ukrainian counterparts, palling around and ignoring the Nazi-inspired Wolfangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves.

Azov is a militia that has been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, and is considered one of the most effective units in the field against pro-Russian separatists. But it also widely known as a bastion of neo-Nazism within the ranks of the Ukrainian military that has been criticized by international human rights groups, tied to an international fascist network and even a major terror plot.

According to Lower Class Magazine, a leftist German publication, Azov maintains a semi-underground outfit called the “Misanthropic Division” that recruits heavily among the ranks of neo-Nazi youth in France, Germany and Scandinavia. Foreign fighters are promised training with heavy weapons, including tanks, at Ukrainian camps filled with fascist fellow travelers. They even include military veterans like Mikael Skillit, a Swedish former army sniper turned neo-Nazi volunteer for Azov. “After World War Two, the victors wrote their history,” Skillit told the BBC. “They decided that it’s always a bad thing to say I am white and I am proud.”

A prime example of how today’s mainstream media paradigm works in the U.S. is the case of Ukraine, where Americans have been shielded from evidence that the 2014 ouster of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was a U.S.-supported coup d’etat spearheaded by violent neo-Nazi extremists.

As The New York Times has instructed us, there was no coup in Ukraine; there was no U.S. interference; and there weren’t even that many neo-Nazis. And, the ensuing civil conflict wasn’t a resistance among Yanukovych’s supporters to his illegal ouster; no, it was “Russian aggression” or a “Russian invasion.”

Exclusive: A Ukrainian military offensive into rebel-held eastern Ukraine is giving Washington’s war hawks an excuse to demand President Trump escalate tensions with Russia, negating his hopes for détente, writes Jonathan Marshall.

Less than two weeks into office, President Trump faces one of the first big tests of his non-confrontational policy toward Russia. As new fighting erupts in Eastern Ukraine, the Kiev regime and its U.S. supporters are predictably demanding a showdown with Vladimir Putin.

By Jonathan Marshall Consortium News February 1, 2017

Last month, the Washington Post gave a glowing front-page boost to an anonymous online blacklist of hundreds of American websites, from marginal conspiracy sites to flagship libertarian and progressive publications. As Max Blumenthal reported for AlterNet, the anonymous website argued that all of them should be investigated by the federal government and potentially prosecuted under the Espionage Act as Russian spies, for wittingly or unwittingly spreading Russian propaganda. It’s now been a few days, and the shock and disgust is turning to questions about how to fight back—and who we should be fighting against. Who were the Washington Post’s sources for their journalism blacklist? WaPo’s key source was an anonymous online group calling itself PropOrNot (i.e., “Propaganda Or Not”). It was here that the blacklist of American journalists allegedly working with the Kremlin was posted. The Washington Post cited PropOrNot as a credible source, and gra nted them the right to anonymously accuse major American news outlets of treason, recommending that the government investigate and prosecute them under the Espionage Act for spreading Russian propaganda. -more-

By Mark Ames for Alternet. Posted on Popular Resistance December 12, 2016

The US-NATO war project in Ukraine has stalled. Europe is growing tired of the Kiev regime and the US has made such a mess of things there is little room for maneuvering.
Here is a good overview of the situation.
Bruce Gagnon Organizing Notes August 28, 2016

The move comes a day after the Russian Federal Security Service said it had foiled terrorist attacks in Crimea organized by the Ukrainian main intelligence directorate.

Soldiers from the Ukrainian army ride on tanks in the port city of Mariupol, southeastern Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 5, 2014.

Ukraine has built up its armed forces on the border with Crimea in accordance with President Poroshenko’s combat readiness order, the country’s chief of the general staff said.

“Divisions and units of the Ukrainian armed forces which are stationed in the vicinity of the administrative border with Crimea are on high alert. A build-up of corresponding groups has been carried out,” Viktor Muzhenko said on his Facebook page.

Earlier in the day, Petro Poroshenko ordered to put all military units near the border with Crimea and in Donbass on high combat readiness.

The move comes a day after the Russian Federal Security Service said it had foiled terrorist attacks in Crimea organized by the Ukrainian main intelligence directorate, and stamped out a spy ring detaining both Russian and Ukrainian nationals involved in the plot. Two Russian officers were killed.

On May 2, 2016, Odessans once again showed their great capacity for courage. Defying threats by local and national fascist organizations, thousands of city residents, accompanied by international monitors from across Europe and the United States, gathered to pay their respects to the victims of a fascist massacre and press their demand for an international investigation

Special Report: The U.S. government defined events in Ukraine as a “pro-democracy” revolution battling “Russian aggression” — at least as far as the world’s mainstream media was concerned. But what if the script were flipped, asks Joe Lauria.

Exclusive: Several weeks before Ukraine’s 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now “Yats” is no longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s stepping down is a mostly cosmetic move in response to the Dutch rejecting the E.U.’s association agreement with Ukraine, a country still locked in political dysfunction, says Gilbert Doctorow.

Ukrainian nationalist groups remain embraced in large by Western nations, who were pleased at their violent rallies ousting the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine. However much Western governments try to shore up the image of these groups as “democratic,” they continue to engage in ethnic and religious violence, as evidenced over this weekend.

The Ukrainian city of Uman, in the Cherkasy Province, is an historical site of pilgrimage for Hasidic Jews, which often draws tens of thousands of pilgrims during Rosh Hashana. The pilgrimage centers around the burial site of an important religious leader of the late 18th century.

Exclusive: As rightists riot in Ukraine – killing three policemen in a protest against making any concessions to ethnic Russians in the east – The New York Times had to move nimbly to again foist all the blame on Russia’s President Putin, but the Times was up to the propaganda task, writes Robert Parry.

REUTERS – Calling the situation in eastern Ukraine “explosive”, Germany’s foreign minister urged both parties in the conflict to come together quickly for talks to prevent a spiral in violence.
In a newspaper interview on Sunday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he had proposed in talks with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts that Kiev and pro-Russian separatists sit down urgently with representatives from the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) to try to reduce tensions.
“The situation in eastern Ukraine is explosive,” he told the Bild am Sonntag.
“There is a lot at stake. If both parties in the conflict don’t return to the peace process, a new military escalation spiral could be triggered at any time.”

In addition to the funds pledged by the Harper government, the Canadian Federation of Municipalities continues to play a central role in helping train managers at the municipal level in Ukraine.

Canada has made its move, deciding to join with its Cold War allies in their stance against Russian involvement in the domestic affairs of Ukraine. Nonetheless, the way forward is not all clear, as many contradictions and caveats are including in the Harper government’s new foreign affairs initiative.

Humanitarian intervention as a basis for using force against another nation, or within another nation’s territory, is not without its own set of legal challenges and criticisms. Russia’s justification for using force in the Crimean peninsula, in the wake of repeated calls for intervention in Syria, highlights difficulties associated with humanitarian intervention as a basis for the use of force.

Consortium News July 13, 2015

Exclusive: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s “regime change” in early 2014 without weighing the likely chaos and consequences. Now, as neo-Nazis turn their guns on the government, it’s hard to see how anyone can clean up the mess that Nuland made, writes Robert Parry.

Consortium News June 22, 2015

Exclusive: In the up-is-down Orwellian world that is now The New York Times’ editorial page, there was no coup in Ukraine in 2014, no U.S.-driven “regime change,” no provocation on Russia’s border, just Moscow’s aggression — a sign of how propaganda has taken over mainstream U.S. media, writes Robert Parry.

There once was a time when the U.S. news media investigated U.S. imperial adventures overseas, such as Washington-sponsored coups. Journalists also asked tough questions to officials implicated in corruption even if those queries were inconvenient to the desired propaganda themes. But those days are long gone, as the Washington Post demonstrated again this week.

On Wednesday, the Post’s editorial board had a chance to press Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk about the U.S. government’s role in the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that elevated him to his current post – after he was handpicked by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who declared “Yats is the guy” in a pre-coup intercepted phone call.

A member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) waits to depart to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, in central Kiev, March 17, 2015. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

As Ukraine continues its battle against separatists, corruption and a collapsing economy, it has taken a dangerous step that could further tear the country apart: Ukraine’s parliament, the Supreme Rada, passed a draft law last month honoring organizations involved in mass ethnic cleansing during World War Two

Posted on May 17, 2015 truthdig.com

By Halyna Mokrushyna, CounterPunch

A family rests in a hostel for the internally displaced in Donetsk. Many homes were damaged by bombs and shells launched by the Ukrainian army in 2014. People of means or with family connections have moved out of the area. (AP / Efrem Lukatsky)

When the people of the Donetsk area protested imposed changes, Kyiv launched an “anti-terrorist” operation against them. I saw first-hand these “terrorists” who had decided to build something different from the oligarchic regime. Theirs is an enormous and difficult task.

“The 20th century, which was born proclaiming peace and justice, died bathed in blood. It passed on a world much more unjust than the one it inherited. The 21st century, which also arrived heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessor’s footsteps. In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on Earth ended up on the moon. But the astronauts found no signs at all of dangerous dreams or broken promises or hopes destroyed. If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps they were never misplaced. Perhaps they are in hiding here. Here on Earth.”

– EDWARD GALEANO “MIRRORS: Stories of Almost Everyone”

American military advisers are in Ukraine training so-called “National Guard” volunteers. Some are comparing the sending of military advisers to Ukraine and those military advisers in Vietnam before outbreak of catastrophic war in that nation. Although virtually unreported in western media and unknown…

Consorium News May 9, 2015

Exclusive: U.S.-taxpayer-funded Radio Liberty has a checkered history that includes hiring Nazi sympathizers as Cold War commentators. Now, one of its current writers has used the platform to bash an American scholar who won’t join Official Washington’s “group think” on Ukraine, Robert Parry reports.

Several days ago, I came across a news report of two videos released by the Ukrainian Informational Resistance channel on YouTube on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union in WWII.

A Kansas man arrested and charged Friday morning for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State was under surveillance by the FBI last year when he checked himself into a mental institution and was not regarded as an immediate threat, according to a document obtained by The Intercept.

Documents posted on the web reveal a high-level anti-Russian propaganda war being waged in south and eastern Ukraine by the US, the UK and NATO on behalf of the Kiev Government, using non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as agents.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — On the edge of the city here, members of the 37th Mechanized Infantry Battalion are living in cramped bunkers sunk about 8 feet into the black earth of farm fields. The small spaces are jammed with bunk beds, weapons, food and the occasional stray cat or dog.

The (not so secret) corporate wars behind the US led media fable of Russian aggression in the Ukraine — the IMF/Monsanto takeover of Europe’s breadbasket.

While attempting to distract us with 24/7 media hype, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) quietly gave the Ukraine a $17 billion loan – but only if they would open up to biotech farming and the selling of Monsanto’s poison crops and chemicals – destroying a farmland that is one of the most pristine in all of Europe. Make no mistake that what is happening in the Ukraine now is deeply tied to the interests of Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other big players (including Hillary Clinton) in the poison food game.

Farm equipment dealer, Deere, along with seed producers Dupont and Monsanto, will have a heyday. The opening of Monsanto’s new office in the Ukraine coincided with land grabs with loans from the IMF and World Bank to one of the world’s most hated corporations. BAN GMO – BAN MONSANTO

Exclusive: Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.

The civil war in Ukraine has exposed a fundamental rift between the US and Europe in terms of vision and goals for the region, as powerful US hardliners are working tirelessly to escalate the crisis with a broader agenda in mind, Der Spiegel news magazine said.

US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC said the US would deploy personnel by the end of this week to train the Ukrainian national guard.

When Petro Poroshenko became the president of Ukraine, German politicians pinned their hopes on him. However, after one year of his governance, Berlin does not hide its disappointment with Poroshenko’s performance.

SPUTNIK · 378 SHARES ·FEB 28, 2015

It’s easy to forget that just two years ago, President Obama was determined to bomb Syria and remove the Assad regime, and U.S. establishment institutions were working to lay the groundwork for that campaign. NPR began dutifully publishing reports from anonymous U.S. officials that Syria had stockpiled large amounts of chemical weapons; the NYT was reporting that Obama was “increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down” Assad; Secretary of State John Kerry pronounced that forced removal of Assad was “a matter of national security” and “a matter of the credibility of the United States of America.”

From the article: Above all, they want Ukraine’s mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia’s long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country’s economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

Global Research News Hour February 22, 2015 ? Ukraine: One Year after the Coup By Michael Welch, Rick Rozoff, and Robert Parry LISTEN TO THE SHOW Length (59:05) “If it is not announced by 10:00 tomorrow that Yanukovich is gone, we’re going to attack with weapons.”…

On political propaganda, media wars and more Jan Oberg interview with RT International – YouTube On political propaganda, counter-propaganda – the case of Ukraine – and how news have become commodities to be sold on a market and undermining democracy and people’s wish to engage in politics. Freedom…

Exclusive: As the Ukraine crisis worsens, Official Washington fumes only about “Russian aggression” — much as a half century ago, the Tonkin Gulf talk was all about “North Vietnamese aggression.” But then and now there were other sides to the story – and questions that Congress needed to ask, writes Robert Parry.

Special Report: Among the arguments for why Americans should risk nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine is that the regime that took power in a coup last year “shares our values.” But one of those “values” – personified by Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko – may be the skill of using insider connections, reports Robert Parry.

On February 12, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, announced that the IMF had reached an agreement with the Ukrainian government on a new economic reform program. Ms Lagarde’s statement, made in Brussels, came only minutes after peace negotiations between the heads of the German, French, Russian und Ukrainian governments in Minsk, Belarus, had ended. The timing was no coincidence. Washington had been left out of the negotiations and now reacted by sending its most powerful financial organization to the forefront in order to deliver a clear message to the world: that the US will not loosen its grip on the Ukraine, if not by sending weapons, then at least economically and financially.

The Minsk ceasefire agreement announced on the 12th February must be considered in the context of the concrete reality of the situation in Ukraine and Nato’s ambitions in Eurasia. Some hope that this agreement is evidence of a split between the United States and its Nato allies, particularly Germany and France, but the German-French meeting with Putin in Moscow, and the Obama-Merkel press conference held in Washington one day before the Minsk meeting began, buried any hopes that the European countries in Nato would separate themselves from their common objective, the domination of Russia.
First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2015/02/14/minsk-the-way-forward/

New Eastern Outlook February 14, 2015

Exclusive: A new truce agreement in Ukraine rekindles hope that the bloodshed can be reduced if not stopped, but Official Washington’s gross misunderstanding of the crisis, blaming everything on Russia’s President Putin, raises doubts and portends a potentially grave catastrophe, writes Robert Parry.

ConsortiumNews.com February 13, 2015

Exclusive: The New York Times has been more biased on the Ukraine crisis – endlessly promoting State Department propaganda – than when it published false Iraqi WMD stories last decade. Case in point: a story from Mariupol hailing the Azov battalion without noting its neo-Nazi fighters, writes Robert Parry.

ConsortiumNews.com February 11, 2015

by RON JACOBS Talk about a contrived crisis. NATO, in its ongoing struggle to create enemies and thereby provide itself with a reason to exist, is now calling Russia its greatest threat. In other words, there really is no threat, unless NATO provokes Moscow and in doing so, creates one.

Counterpunch.org WEEKEND EDITION FEBRUARY 13-15, 2015

The ‘exclusive’ photos of ‘Russian invasion in Ukraine’ in 2014 turned out to be easily found in the Web, with at least one of them dating back to 2008. Now, US senator James Inhofe is furious with the Ukrainian delegation for setting him up with the ‘evidence’.

SPUTNIKNEWS.COM February 13, 2015

Exclusive: The neocons’ war-and-more-war bandwagon is loaded up again and rolling downhill as “everyone who matters” in Washington is talking up sending sophisticated weapons to Kiev to escalate Ukraine’s civil war, but some “realists,” an endangered species in U.S. foreign policy, dissent, notes Robert Parry.

Consortium News February 10, 2015

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The armed conflict in Ukraine is a smokescreen for the seizure of high-quality cropland by foreign firms funded by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the office of a German parliament member said on Thursday.

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